openSUSE 11.1 is now out (screenshots), featuring KDE 4.1.3 and a string of KDE improvements. The release brings back the much-loved KDE-PIM suite, and includes new games, the KSCD CD player, KSystemLog to keep track of system changes, improvements to Dolphin, Konqueror (including Webkit part), Plasma (including auto-hide panel, folder view), Marble integration with OpenStreetMap, and much more. The release is available as an installable live CD, or on a DVD with KDE 3.5.10, GNOME, Xfce, and many more applications.

KWin Composite Effects

Of particular interest are the KWin improvements in this release. openSUSE users now have a number of backported KWin effects to enjoy, and show off to their friends. If KWin effects arent your cup of tea, you can use the new Compiz KDE configuration module to enable and handle Compiz Fusion on KDE 4.

PackageKit and Powerdevil

KDE has now also standardised on PackageKit for its backend, which means both desktops are using the same update stack. Furthermore, Powerdevil is now included for easier and better power management on your KDE 4 desktop. Just click the battery icon in the system tray.

Other

The award-winning release also contains 230 new features, improvements to YaST, OpenOffice.org 3.0, and more freedom with a brand new licence, Liberation fonts, and openJDK. This is also the first release built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service, and the last release to contain the full KDE 3 desktop available on the DVD medium for installation.

Finally remember that for testing purposes, the recently released KDE 4.2 Beta 2 is available in the openSUSE Build Service, via 1-click-install. Alternatively, you can try out the release with KDE Four Live.

Comments

Can sombody tell me why openSuse has to choose the worst made (among all distros) KDM theme as default?
Look at the GNOME (GDM) theme, isn't it beautiful? Then compare it to the KDM green stripes with fonts that one can't even read - an embarrassment.
I love openSuse but come on people, you can't be really serious about this.

Strange comment, I actually _really_ like the look of the login screen, and from what I've seen almost everyone does. The fonts are quite perfectly readable. The green stripes look pretty slick, and the design fits in well with the boot, installer screen, etc.

There have virtually been no complaints about this -- I think you just have slightly more idiosyncratic tastes. You can very easily change the KDM theme from KDE's system settings, anyway.

Yes it's possible that I have a weird taste, that I am not cool but I love the GDM theme in contrast to the KDM Theme. I even like the original KDE theme more than the opensUSE one even though it doesn't match the green boot screen stripes. Couldn't they use a background similar to the default wallpaper? Yes I like the wallpaper but I hate green stripes! Apart from that we had those same stripes in 10.3 I think it was. They just did some recycling, no new ideas. Maybe that's why I don't like it.

This is not true unless you are using another openSuse 11.1 with a different KDE 4 than the one that I have installed.
First, as a user there is no possibility of changing the KDM theme on KDE 4.x so one has to log in as root in order to do so.
Now the theme is changed so one logs out or restart X just to find a fall back theme instead of the one that was chosen.
Am I missing something?

I like it too. Even if green is not my favourite colour (I prefer Fedora's blue) it is well integrated and very nice: a great improvement in usability respect the silly gdm I was "forced" to use in Fedora 8. openSUSE was always (and is) the best looking Linux available.

You don't have to like Gnome (I don't either) but if there is one thing that the GTK guys can do then it's designing Themes. Actually it's the only thing that I like about Gnome.
Look at Ubuntu for example, they use brown. Brown is a really boring colour to me but these guys make it damn beautiful and attractive.
Apart from that GDM has at least one feature that KDM doesn't have: I can use more than one themes at the same time like a diasshow. This isn't possible with KDM AFAIK, it's very easy to chang and install themes on GDM and there are a lot of Themes available for this login manager.
Of course I prefer KDM but I try to be objective, even as a KDE fan.

Well you can all preach like Paul an Peter, the truth is that it isn't that easy to install KDM themes, even on KDE 3.5 you have to install a theme manager before this is possible. On KDE 4 it just doesn't work! Well try to install a GDM theme - it's fool proof. I love KDE but there is a lot of room for improvement here.

In all honesty, the window deco is terrible. Look how elegant and beautiful the original Oxygen deco is and look at what openSuse offers. It's the very first thing that I change after I log in for the first time.
OpenSuse is the best KDE distro out there - no doubt about that and it's installer is presently unbeatable, hats off to the guys who worked on it (if onle the other themes were that beautiful) but since this distro changed from SuSe to openSUse it hadn't designed a boot screen, a KDM theme and a start up screen that makes me say wow.
And for those who think that I don't have taste, take a look at PCLinuxOS. it can be done.

But they coloured it with blue using white buttons, which doesn't look good at all. It just doesn't fit, green everything but blue Window deco - terrible. It (the openSuse modification) can't be compared to the original Oxygen decoration.

It is not a OpenSuse modification, but they should probably do something with the blue. Open the window decoration control panel and check the "Blend title bar colors with window contents" option, and you are good to go.

But it is not Oxygen, it's Ozone the default window decoration for KDE4. Oxygen newer was default, both on account on the problems to distinguish between active and inactive windows on non composite systems and the inability to follow the KDE window decoration standard with ability for the window decoration to follow the color scheme.

Nothing, expect for Ozones ability to follow the KDE color schemes window decoration color. Adding greater distinction of windows and making it better usability for people with non composite systems, low end displays and vision problems.

This article sounds very much like marketing speach. Something I would expect in an advertisement, but not on the dot.

It's OK to announce new distribution releases here, but please avoid marketing speech like "The award-winning release...". Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex has been released several weeks ago and also kontains KDE 4.1.x. And I am sure that it also has won some awards.

Well, given that PackageKit is gaining more traction, custom stuff like KWin and PowerDevil backports are new stuff that isn't available in most other places, and also regarding the fact that Novell/openSUSE is the most active corporate contributor to KDE (with openSUSE being the most polished KDE distro at the moment), I think there's enough meat and justification to publish such an article.

I for one, as Kubuntu user even, love to read about what openSUSE is doing with KDE, and I'm totally in favor of this article being published here on the Dot. This is nice stuff that I want to know of.

Where do you get the opinion from that suse is the most active corporate contributor? And the 'most polished' opinion is surely your own and not shared all over.

Anyway, the point is not that a user might want to know about this, but the point is that the dot is not an advertisement platform for certain distro's that happen to have some friends in the dot moderation team.

If you look at the number of KDE developers employed by Suse, you'll see why they can be considered the most active corporate contributor. At least compared with other distro's. Nokia and KDAB also employ many KDE developers, and there are other parties out there, but Suse ranks among the largest.

And about the polish, they use these resources for polish of KDE. And for back porting as well, which has its downsides, but the end result is that I certainly believe suse 11.1 to be the best KDE distro out there.

And I have no problem with positive stories about excellent KDE focused distributions on the dot. It's KDE advertisement, and that's what we do here.

Well, packagekit came from Fedora/Red Hat and Fedora 10 was (I think, may be wrong) the first distro to use kpackagekit.

Personally I don't think the dot is the place for distro release announcements - that's distrowatch and the distro websites themselves - but hey, whatever. I don't really care too much one way or another.

Then the dot is serving (some of - you at least) its readers well by publishing this stuff :-) I guess some people didn't care for the story on Qt4.5 beta either (random non core kde example). Although that one was interesting to me.

As others have said, packagekit comes from the redhat guys, and powerdevil (both the app and the backporting) was done by Dario Freddi, which also works as a packager for the KDEmod project on Arch Linux (we also had the kwin backports for quite a while before opensuse shipped with them, for example the Cube backport was done by Mandriva, iirc.).

I also have big problems with this post; are there suse backers that have a hand in chosing which articles go on the dot??

This article surely isn't helping KDE in any way. A distro saying how great they are for shipping loads of unreleased code from hard working KDE people is not just misplaced on the dot. It is bad enough that suse claims to ship a better-than-kde release with alpha-quality code, to have this on the official KDE publishing channel is really poor practice.

I really can't agree at all. You can't claim it's a SuSE conspiracy because articles for other distros are pretty much always published for new versions as well (even rather small distros), unless thats also part of the conspiracy to throw people off the scent... (the devious jerks! ;)

At least from my reading of it, the only thing that could *qualify* as marketing speak is the single adjective (adjective phrase?)'award-winning' which, given that the vast majority of the article is practically just listing the updates, I don't think it's reasonable to get worked up over.

>Will the abuse never stop :(
Sorry to say, but IMO, the only people being abused here are the OpenSuSE people/article submitter/Dot editors.

You should do your research.
(i) distribution releases on the dot are on the whole extremely useful (as a conclusion from the majority of dot readers and from the dot editors),
(ii) one or two people _always_ complain with every distribution release article,
(iii) this article _is_ helping KDE as people are finding out the latest ways to have the KDE platform on their computer,
(iv) the SUSE KDE people are _all_ KDE developers, mostly core developers,
(v) the decision to backport changes is never taken lightly -- it's curious that the only people who ever complain about this however are those not working on shipping a usable distribution. Releasing a high quality distribution with KDE 4 is not trivial; backporting things with KDE 4 at this current stage is a simple fact, and all popular distributions are doing it. If one particular backport is not working then I would love to hear it, otherwise I'm not sure why you're complaining.

Gotta love that quote: "Releasing a high quality distribution with KDE 4 is not trivial". I dare say it has not been done, because it is not yet doable.

The thing that struck me about the article is that phrase "brings back KDE-PIM".

When was it gone? Did the last openSUSE really have no Kmail in it? I can barely imagine that. That would be definitely too much blood on that edge for me.

And one other thing that strikes me is the implication that distributors should be or even have to be sponsors of the development. Creation and distribution can be done by the same people, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Other than that, I guess since the articles for the releases are written by the respective community members, that they must be expected and allowed to have a spin to them.

I'm still using openSUSE 10.3 and both 11.0 and 11.1 are now out. Regardless, KDE support is fantastic! Both, the stable and unstable branches. I just moved from KDE 4.1.3 to KDE 4.2 Beta 2 and am really happy with it.

I'm sorry you see it that way, but I disagree with your approach on several counts. For one, Ars Technica is IMHO the most respected Linux reviewing website out there; they do not give awards as a whim, and the KDE 4 delivery of openSUSE got a special mention. That this release won an award was only mentioned to highlight the fact that this is a _particularly good openSUSE release_, and in that sense it can be distinguished from say some previous openSUSE releases.

I made no comparison to Kubuntu, did not say that it was an "award-winning distribution, unlike others" which you seem to apparently think. I'm not making this into some sort of competition; I would much rather be in an environment where we work together.

Since you think the whole article sounds like marketing speech, I'd be interested in hearing what else is contentious use of language for the dot. I've been reading the dot for several years, am certainly first-and-foremost a KDE user, and yet I'm still amazed by the fact that one or two people always complain when a distribution release is mentioned. The vast majority of Dot readers, and the Dot editors, approve of these stories and see them as quite useful. I wish some people would just get over it.

I installed 11.1 yesterday and am really impressed. KDE 4.1 IS ready for production use - only on Kubuntu one doesn't get that impression...

I've been using Debian or Debian-based distros (Kubuntu, Sidux) for years now and I'm still a bit sceptical about RPM (I can painfully remember dependency nightmares on Suse 6.0 that made me switch to Debian in the first place). But so far, package management works like a charm - adding the Packman repository went smooth, at least.

And the desktop experience is way better than on Kubuntu, everything seems to fit together (but I guess you can't blame the Kubuntu folks, they sure don't have the manpower Suse has).

Dependency hell still exists Sepp but one gets used to it - just joking ;)
I am presently using openSuse 11.1 running KDE 4.2 and you wouldn't believe that this KDE is still Beta, really smooth and stable, only that my little red ball is not working :(

The only problem that I am having with 11.1 is that I can't install my Digittrade DVB-T Stick. It was no problem on 11 but I keep getting an error 2 (Fehler 2) message while trying to install it on openSuse 11.1.
It's really frustrating because I don't want to reinstall openSuse 11.

Is there any coder here who could give me one or two tips on what to change in the install script so that it can be installed on 11.1? It's an openSuse 11 driver so I guess it's because of the new kernel.

KUbuntu isn't as refined as openSuse but it's really not bad, it's coming along slowly but surely.
Well yes, I have to agree that openSuse is the best KDE distro out there and it keeps getting better:)

Well, I did that but the doctor said that I should be a bit patient and promised to fix it with the next visit (update), which will make me appreciate it even more ;)

I love KDE 4. Yes there are still a few things to fix but it's coming on very nicely. I can't overemphasize how impressed I am by the industriousness, energy, determination and ambitiousness of Aaron and his crew. Big up!

You are absolutely right about Kubuntu. It makes you hate KDE. I installed KDE 4.2 beta 2, only to burn it 30 minutes later, wishing to return to GNOME, after a conflicting-PowerDevil, no-Akonadi, and unusable session.

Also, my session revealed that something is dead wrong with my translation (Spanish). It is so wrong, that I'm willing to fix that by myself. Just tell me how can I cooperate with my translation team and I'll improve that translation.

I also installed KUbuntu on another partition (just to test it) and it's running fine - not so refined like openSuse but it's good to go. There are even a few things that they enhanced that openSuse didn't: for example, I can see my hard drive partitions in Dolphin, which I have to add manually in openSuse. I also like the quick start folder right beside the start menu, it's very convinient.
I think that the problem with KUbuntu is that it has gained a bad name over the years and now it's hard to get rid of that even though the devs are really trying.
I am speaking as a fan and user of openSuse.